objective-c on windows?

Are there any windows compilers for objective-c? And if so, is it plausible, given windows apis(which I know nothing of), to write an app in objective-c(and yes I am aware of all the cocoa objects and such, but could you use cocoa or openstep frameworks or something)?

Leroy Wrote:Are there any windows compilers for objective-c? And if so, is it plausible, given windows apis(which I know nothing of), to write an app in objective-c(and yes I am aware of all the cocoa objects and such, but could you use cocoa or openstep frameworks or something)?

If you intent to write a large amount of code and run it on mac and windows its probably wise to write it mostly in C, but write OS specific code (getting a window converting events into your internal representation etc) in whatever is most suitable (on mac objective c, on windows I assume it would be C).

Yeah, I remember some folks (definitely more than one) not being happy about the gnustep offerings quite a while back too. But to be fair, I don't recall hearing much about it past that, certainly not in the last year or two, so maybe it's at least worth another look?

My staunch opinion is that Cocoa on Windows (yellow box) is a bad, bad idea. It sounds great, but I think it would open up way too many vulnerabilities. What I mean by that is, think about what happened to Java on Windows: Looked fantastic at the time but ended up in utter ruin (or is at least headed that way for sure), partly, if not totally, because of Microsoft's control over (get this) their own operating system. And don't give me any crap about them being in violation of anti-trust laws because that didn't and won't do a [darn] thing to stop them. Bill Gates himself called it a "failure of capitalism". If that doesn't scare anybody, I don't know what would, but his statement didn't seem to get much press here. But anyway, moving along...

To me, yellow box is like The Trojan Horse (history, not virus), except that they already know that it isn't a gift, and they already know what's inside. It's like trying to put out a fire by smothering it with gasoline, or wrapping a fire in paper -- it just doesn't make sense!

This is June of 2007. Make no mistake about it, Microsoft OWNS the operating system market -- hands down. They don't own it because they have better technology or more money or better engineers or more innovation, they own it because they know how to KILL their competition. Go ahead, try to put Cocoa on Windows... I dare you. I double dare you.

AnotherJake Wrote:This is June of 2007. Make no mistake about it, Microsoft OWNS the operating system market -- hands down. They don't own it because they have better technology or more money or better engineers or more innovation, they own it because they know how to KILL their competition. Go ahead, try to put Cocoa on Windows... I dare you. I double dare you.

Perhaps, but when a company is the size of Microsoft they can't simply kill everything that might compete with them. Anything below a certain threshold is simply too small for them to react to. This is true of all large companies.

Lots of companies make a good living in these "blind spots". If they do TOO well then life can get dangerous. :-) Cocoa for Windows at this point is unlikely to grab even Java-like mindshare/marketshare, let alone .NET marketshare. So I think it would be as safe as Safari for Windows is for the foreseeable future.

I don't think that yellow box is something that would be under their radar. I mean, there is only one commercial competitor to their OS product, and that is Apple. And Cocoa is a competing OS technology. I think they would immediately make every effort to marginalize it and come up with a way to break it at every corner (after they embraced it and attempted to extend it of course). I agree that it would be very nice for developers, but I still have a strong gut reaction that it's a bad bad idea for Apple's healthy bottom line and continued existence in the long run... But maybe I'm wrong [shrugs].

I was reading this lengthy article at nymag earlier and I was thinking about this thread. Here are a couple of choice quotes I culled from it (excellent article BTW, although I disagree with some of the author's viewpoints):

On page 6: `Earlier in the day, Jobs had quipped, in answer to a question about the popularity of iTunes on Windows, â€œItâ€™s like giving a glass of ice water to someone in hell.â€'

On page 3: `...Jobs was clear from one decision: his refusal, at first, to make the iPod compatible with Windows-based PCs. By doing so, Jobs was limiting its potential market to 15 million Mac ownersâ€”and blowing off the 500 millionâ€“strong PC universe. According to Steven Levy, author of the iPod history The Perfect Thing, some members of the iPod team disagreed. But when they argued the point, Jobs exploded. â€œI remember that day,â€ an Apple executive told Levy. â€œHe said, â€˜Iâ€™m never taking this to the PC!â€™â€'

So the argument I would formulate using those two quotes as ammo would be this: Even if it were a good idea to bring Cocoa to Windows, I would be willing to bet copious amounts of money that it would be over Steve Jobs' dead body (figuratively speaking of course).

And for further rhetorical thought or discussion: Wouldn't it be bad to dilute one's product by letting a major feature of it bleed over into a competitor's? I mean, if one of the great features of OS X is Cocoa, then wouldn't it hurt Apple's bottom line to make it available on Windows, thus making Windows itself more attractive (and OS X less exclusive)?

I'm all for hearing good arguments for why it *should* be made available on Windows, but I still haven't seen any that have convinced me... yet.

AnotherJake Wrote:I was reading this lengthy article at nymag earlier and I was thinking about this thread. Here are a couple of choice quotes I culled from it (excellent article BTW, although I disagree with some of the author's viewpoints):

On page 6: `Earlier in the day, Jobs had quipped, in answer to a question about the popularity of iTunes on Windows, â€œItâ€™s like giving a glass of ice water to someone in hell.â€'

On page 3: `...Jobs was clear from one decision: his refusal, at first, to make the iPod compatible with Windows-based PCs. By doing so, Jobs was limiting its potential market to 15 million Mac ownersâ€”and blowing off the 500 millionâ€“strong PC universe. According to Steven Levy, author of the iPod history The Perfect Thing, some members of the iPod team disagreed. But when they argued the point, Jobs exploded. â€œI remember that day,â€ an Apple executive told Levy. â€œHe said, â€˜Iâ€™m never taking this to the PC!â€™â€'

So the argument I would formulate using those two quotes as ammo would be this: Even if it were a good idea to bring Cocoa to Windows, I would be willing to bet copious amounts of money that it would be over Steve Jobs' dead body (figuratively speaking of course).

And for further rhetorical thought or discussion: Wouldn't it be bad to dilute one's product by letting a major feature of it bleed over into a competitor's? I mean, if one of the great features of OS X is Cocoa, then wouldn't it hurt Apple's bottom line to make it available on Windows, thus making Windows itself more attractive (and OS X less exclusive)?

I'm all for hearing good arguments for why it *should* be made available on Windows, but I still haven't seen any that have convinced me... yet.

From an Indie Mac developers standpoint, it allows them to sell product on windows, opening their market to the other 95% of users.